Alfred Tennyson

6 August 1809 - 6 October 1892. Poet Laureate during much of Victoria's reign.

Life

Alfred Tennyson was born on the 6th of August 1809 to George Clayton Tennyson, rector of Lincolnshire, and Elizabeth Fytche Tennyson, a vicar's daughter, in Somersby, Lincolnshire, as the fourth son of twelve children. By the age of seven he attended the grammar school at Louth where he spent nearly four unhappy years. He returned to the family home at the age of eleven. There his father became his tutor until Alfred joined his elder brothers at Trinity College in Cambridge in 1828. Although he attended Trinity rather because he had the desire to escape from Somersby than due to the wish to do academic studies, the time at Cambridge was probably the happiest in his life because he escaped the problems and the atmosphere at home, caused by his father's abuse of alcohol and drugs and by a strain of epilepsy in the family heritage. Tennyson got to know Arthur Henry Hallam who was regarded as the most brilliant man of the current Cambridge generation who later also got engaged with Tennyson's sister Emily. In 1829 Tennyson and Hallam joined the "Apostles", a secret society who was regarded as the university's elite but Tennyson already left after a few sessions.

With the death of Tennyson's father in 1831 and Hallam's death in 1833 a hard time in Tennyson's life began which he himself expressed with the following words: "I suffered what seemed to me to shatter all my life so that I desired to die rather than to live" (Fredeman, 268). In the years after Hallam's death Tennyson had a flirtation with Rosa Baring but the relationship did not seem to have been serious. He first had a serious relationship in 1836 with Emily Sellwood, the sister of the woman who married Tennyson's brother Charles. They got engaged one year later but as members of Tennyson's family suffered from epilepsy he thought he would pass this disease by marriage to his children so he broke off with Emily in 1840. In 1843 Tennyson had his first of several stays in a "hydropathic" establishment [an institution that makes use of water for treating illnesses] for curing his melancholia. His last stay there was in 1848 although he was not completely cured of his illness. In 1850 Tennyson met Emily Sellwood again and on the 13th of June, 1850, the two of them married. Tennyson later said "The peace of God came into my life when I wedded her" (Kunitz, 611). The two of them had two children, Hallam and Lionel (a third son died at birth).

As William Wordsworth - who had been poet laureate at that time - died in 1850 Tennyson was offered the laureateship after Samuel Rogers refused it and Tennyson accepted. In 1853 Tennyson and his wife moved to the Isle of Wight where they lived a very isolated and calm life but they also built a second house, Aldworth, near Haslemere which became their frequent residence as well. In 1886 Tennyson's son Lionel died which put Tennyson into deep and lasting grief and sorrow which weakened him and led to rheumatic gout in 1888. This brought him near to dying. Although he got better he got the influenza in 1890. On the 6th of October, 1892, he died in his bed at Aldworth while being surrounded by his family.

Tennyson as a poet

Tennyson was said to be one of the three most famous living persons during the Victorian age, next to Queen Victoria and Prime Minister Gladstone. He began writing poetry even before he went to school to escape the problems at home. His first volume of poetry, Poems by Two Brothers, was published in 1827 when he was not quite 18 years old. As his close friend Hallam wrote poetry as well they wanted to publish their work together but Hallam's father forbade his son to include his poems. Poems, Chiefly Lyrical appeared in 1830 and although many of the poems might have been forgotten if written by another person, some of them, especially "Mariana", demonstrate Tennyson's ability to convey a state of strong emotion by the use of objects and landscape. In 1832 he published another volume of poetry, called Poems which included the first versions of some of his most popular works like "The Lady of Shalott" or "A Dream of Fair Women". What is remarkable about the volume are the opposed attractions of isolated poetic creativity and social involvement. - In the poem "The Lady of Shalott" this is expressed by describing the isolated Lady of Shalott who just sees shadows of the world through a mirror at first until she gets active in experiencing life when she sees Lord Lancelot in the mirror. This poem can be seen as a poetological one which demonstrates that art should be produced by experiencing life. Although Hallam's death was a hard incident in Tennyson's life it was also an impulse for some of his greatest poems like "Ulysses" or "Tithonus". He also began writing elegies about Hallam's death, collected them and published them on the 1st of June, 1850. - In Memoriam is probably one of the greatest Victorian poems and made him the major living poet. In 1847 "The Princess" was published which was his first attempt to write a long narrative poem.

The very isolations in his house on the Isle of Wight made Tennyson read many newspapers to stay in contact with world affairs which led him to write "Maud" which deals with the Crimean War. It is Tennyson's most experimental poem because it tells an entirely dramatic narrative in self-contained lyrics. Although Tennyson's contemporaries could not understand or love it "Maud" has become one of his most interesting poems to modern critics because of its experimental quality "for it tells a thouroughly dramatic narrative in self-contained lyrics" (Fredeman, 274) so that the reader has to fill in the gaps by making his or her own conclusions. Another poem dealing with the Crimean War is his poem "The Charge of the Light Brigade", published in 1854. In 1859 Idylls of the King - dealing with King Arthur and the decay of the Round Table which seemed to have been an appropriate symbol of the decay of 19th-century England for Tennyson - was published which brought him widespread popularity as a poet laureate. It contained four of the eventual twelve idylls which were an assembly of poetry composed over a long time. Despite (or because of?) his laureateship Tennyson also had the wish to speak more directly to the common people about emotions and affections he shared with them. The volume Enoch Arden of 1864 resulted out of his wish to be the people's poet and although it used magnificent language and imagery the sentiments seemed easy and secondhand [what does this mean? please explain and/or give an example]. With selling more than 40,000 copies immediately after the publication this volume had the largest sales of any during his lifetime. As Tennyson had been compared to Shakespeare he also tried to write for the stage so he wrote his first play , Queen Mary, in 1875 but it was withdrawn after 23 performances only. Other plays followed, like Harold (1876), Becket (1884), The Falcon (1884), The Cup (1884), The Promise of May (1886) and The Foresters (1892), which had all the attempt to follow Shakespeare but Tennyson failed. In 1883 Tennyson was offered a peerage which was the climax of public recognition. It was the first time in history that a title was given for services in poetry.

References

Fredeman, William E. / Nadel, Ira B.: Victorian Poets Before 1850. Detroit: Gale, 1984. 262-282.

Kunitz, Stanley J.: British Authors of the Nineteenth Century. New York: H.W. Wilson, 1964. 610-613.